Extrability

Extrability is an additional ability or skill that an individual with disabilities develops because of her/his adaptation to living with their disability. Because they inhabit a world designed for their bodies, nondisabled individuals do not need or use extrabilities. For people with disabilities, extrabilities may dramatically improve the quality of life. Extrabilities may serve as disabled people’s competitive advantages. The use and development of extrabilities in professional domains allow people with disabilities to succeed in integrated workplace environments.

The development of extrabilities is based on dignity, mutual respect and the value of the experience in overcoming crisis situations. Those individuals with disabilities who develop extrabilities typically have an experience of surviving and overcoming a deep psychological crisis. Many of them say that they have accepted their new life and destiny with gratitude, which allowed them to accept their own dormant resources.

The conceptual predecessor of extrabilities is the notion of compensatory skills. However, the concept of compensatory skills suggests that a person has a lack that he or she compensates for. Focusing on a disabled person’s compensatory skills presupposes that the person is sick or lacking. The concept of extrability, in turn, is based on the idea that physical and mental changes one faces lead to psychological, social and cultural changes. People with such extrabilities say that without their disability, they could not have achieved much.

Types of extrabilities

• Physical;
• Psychological;
• Cognitive;
• Sensory.

Extrability and disability

The structure of the word “disability” indicates a negative meaning associated with the concept: "dis”- is a negative prefix. Hence the concept of disability is associated with the idea of a lack of abilities. The notion of extrability is opposite in its meaning. Extrability is a positive assessment of adaptation skills that people with disabilities develop thanks to their disability. Extrabilities develop only in social contexts, they add social and economic value. Extrabilities are the abilities and skills that disabled people use in their daily lives.

Extrabilities are demonstrated abilities and talents that had not been active or in demand until the moment of acquiring disability. Under certain circumstances, every person can develop extrabilities.

Examples of extrabilities of persons with disabilities

Below are some examples of extrabilities that people with disabilities may develop.

Possible extrabilities of people with disabilities:

• A dignified way to request for help.

Possible extrabilities of blind people:

• excellent memory;
• developed sense of smell;
• sophisticated sense of touch;
• good hearing;
• developed imagination;
• ability to generate creative solutions;
• advanced analytical thinking;
• ability to competently operate with large amounts of information;
• ability to make decisions under the conditions of a lack of information;
• developed intuition;
• trust;
• ability to rely on internal feedback;
• ability to inspire confidence in others;
• melodic intonation;
• good computer skills;
• other skills.

Possible extrabilities of wheelchair users:

• assiduity;
• great event or logistics planning skills;
• ability to cultivate or join a community;
• upper-body strength;
• management of inaccessible environments;
• creative thinking;
• developed motor skills;
• acute psychological perception;
• developed communication skills;
• other skills.

Possible extrabilities of people with mental disabilities (given how broad this category is, the list below is only provisional; people with different kinds of mental disabilities develop different skills):

• sincerity;
• emotionality;
• openness;
• communication skills;
• sincere expression of creative talents;
• empathy;
• other skills.

Possible extrabilities of deaf and hard of hearing people:

• visual attention;
• strong community ties;
• internal attentiveness to the condition of the body;
• bodily expressiveness;
• gestural expressiveness;
• perception of vibration;
• thinking outside the box;
• attention to details;
• developed imagination;
• expanded vision fields;
• other skills.

These examples are not fixed and guaranteed skills, but rather are skills and capacities that have been observed in some people with disabilities. For each individual situation is unique, each individual develops their own extrabilities which may differ from those developed by people with similar disabilities. What unites these skills, however, is their being developed as a result of one's adaptation to living with disabilities.

Examples of people with extrabilities

• Daniel Kish and other blind people who use echolocation for their daily navigation;
• Employees with mental features at the actory of juniper toys, furniture and household items;
• Soviet listeners;
• Kindergarten instructors with mental disabilities (Israel);
• Roman Aranin, the head of organization Observer;
• Steven Hawking;
• Joely Colmer

Application of extrabilities in professional domains

• Musicians;
• Poets, writers;
• Assemblers in production;
• Piano tuners;
• Masseurs;
• Teachers;
• Sound producers;
• Lawyers;
• Call-center operators;
• Mathematics;
• Programmers;
• Psychologists;
• Guides at exhibitions;
• Trainers on business trainings in the dark;
• Presenters and organizers of sensory projects, such as: "Walk in the dark", restaurants in the dark.

Extrability and inclusive interaction

Inclusive interaction is an interaction of people with and without disabilities that aims at producing something of value for the broader society. Inclusive interaction engages all latent abilities and developed skills of participants with disabilities.

How can one tell that extrabilities are being used in an inclusive interaction? The marker is the drop in the quality and value of the final product, resulting from a substitution of a disabled participant by a nondisabled one. This registered drop in the value of the final product serves as an indicator that the process at stake hinges on the participation of the original disabled participant and her/his extrabilities.

Blind guides at exhibitions in the dark are good examples of professionals who use their extrabilities in inclusive settings. If we replace a blind guide with a well-trained sighted guide, the quality of the service and the customers’ experience will drop.

External links

http://extrability.org/en/

This article "Extrability" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Extrability. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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